I'm a high school librarian. My students and I are interested in starting an after school D&D club. We number about 25. We will likely have 4 or 5 DM's leading campaigns of 4 to 5 players. What do you guys recommend we buy or subscribe to in order to give us a good basic experience? I was thinking the DM guide, Monster Manual, and Player's Handbook along with a Master's subscription. Would that allow me to share the 3 books with 25 players and 5 DM's? I want to buy the right things. Any help and advice is greatly appreciated.
The Master tier let’s you share content with up to five campaigns with a maximum of twelve players each, so you will have more than enough slots for all your players.
What you have there will provide a good basic experience - it has a few subclasses, a smattering of races, and a solid selection of monsters to use. If you wanted to pick up another book—which you would not have to do—Monsters of the Multiverse gives a large selection of enemies and races, making it good bang for the buck.
Based on the experiences of a friend of mine who is likewise the faculty advisor for his D&D club, you also likely will lose some of those players to general attrition, with the largest losses occurring relatively soon after the first session. I know he started out with smaller adventures - one shots and things that took only two or three sessions - to get past the initial days of the club. This lets him not only see who is going to stay, without committing folks to a group that might fall apart, but test out the potential DMs and see if they like DMing before they sign on to a longer campaign.
I would also suggest simple adventures to start and maybe even premade characters for the first game.
In the past at times I have divided up the learn to play adventures so each player has a chance to play most of the basic classes to get a feel of the game and rules. So first part all fighters, the second Wizards, and then cleric and rogues. Each small adventure is designed to show the differences between each class type and give some basic info about the game and rules as well as serves to minimize feelings of "I made a mistake at the beginning and now I do not want to continue" issues.
Please see the section on clubs near the end of the first post of the Buyer's Guide (linked in my signature). That info pre-dates WOTC's purchase of DDB, so things could have changed, but it would be worthwhile to see if that is still a possibility.
Are you doing homebrew adventures (ones you've written yourself) or ones that you buy from WotC?
If you're buying adventures on DDB, they automatically unlock the monsters you need, so I wouldn't necessarily bother with the Monster Manual. If you're writing your own adventures or using third party contrnt, then it's probably worth buying.
Once you've done some games with the core rules (PHB, DMG), I'd consider the following books:
Xanathar's Guide to Everything, which has DM based expansion stuff, more rules, and stuff to help improve the game.
Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, which has more subclasses,.and is generally geared to improving the player side of things.
Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse. 30 additional races for players, plus a an expansion to the Monster Manual.
However, you well find that doing the games for kids, the core rules may well be enough. Judge for yourself after doing it a few times.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Forcing all the members to play each of the basic classes is going overboard. This isn't D&D Boot Camp.
In general it goes back to how people learn things best and to provide experience with each basic group. Some people can just read things and visualize it and some need hands on experience. Also in each class group you are continually reinforcing the base rules of the system that tends to make things easier for players in the long rung.
Also remember the GM are probably new so they need the practice or pre-season "games" to lean or brush up on their craft also.
Why does it have to be so formal? D&D is a game, not a competition. Why not just give the players an overview of what the different classes are and let them make a character using the default stat array and play it? If they don't like the character, let them try a new one. I don't believe I've heard of anyone actually needing to play every class before they understand the rules.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Why does it have to be so formal? D&D is a game, not a competition. Why not just give the players an overview of what the different classes are and let them make a character using the default stat array and play it? If they don't like the character, let them try a new one. I don't believe I've heard of anyone actually needing to play every class before they understand the rules.
People want to know the options and the differences. Some GMs do not let people change PC's just because.
Why does it have to be so formal? D&D is a game, not a competition. Why not just give the players an overview of what the different classes are and let them make a character using the default stat array and play it? If they don't like the character, let them try a new one. I don't believe I've heard of anyone actually needing to play every class before they understand the rules.
People want to know the options and the differences. Some GMs do not let people change PC's just because.
This is a school club. If the GM's going to be that strict they shouldn't be GMing.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I'm not sure anyone was ever advocating some kind of tag team match where people swap in and out at will. The point was that players should pick what appeals to them. If they don't like their character, they should be allowed to try a different one. Obviously, if there are obvious misunderstandings, like trying to use an Evocation Wizard as a Fighter, then I'd review the mechanics first and suggest a better playstyle, but if they're not going to enjoy it...then it'll become a choice of either creating a new character, or finding a new player, who also has a new character. I'd prefer the first.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
First of all Abssdnd I want to say how cool this is you're doing this! 👏
D&D is great for promoting creativity that kids have, social interactions in general, problem solving and teamwork, math, responsibility for showing up when you say you will, seeing there are others in the world besides yourself and your choices effect them also not just you, and showcasing consequences to actions they take.
As for what you need...
I'm assuming your a public school off the bat so if this isn't correct my apologies, but my first question is kind of who's paying for what? Is this from club money? Is this grant related in part? Or are you paying for it because you see the benefits? If it's this last option I want to try to get things as cheap as we can for you!
DNDBeyond has a lot of good free starter information so maybe test the club there before buying a subscription? These are school kids as you said and so as others said some are going to drop out due to finding other things more interesting or just losing interest in the game all together. Also you may have some who can't play regularly due to scheduling of other events in their lives (games if they're on teams as well) so one shots would be better for them. You could have a mix where you do 3 campaigns and 2 tables that are just one-shots. Have you heard of West Marches? One one-shot table could be that where they have a central home city and then adventure out from there doing one-shot quests so there's a town to maybe change with the things they do to feel like a campaign but isn't as much a time commitment as one.
There's also some other websites out there with free book information if you want to branch out. A lot is player focused so again DMs probably do need a resource for them. You definitely want to do a share bundle to maximize your dollar.
I know most will probably use electronics to play so you'll want plenty of power cord strips they can pull into; that said, I'm a big fan of paper (help work on those penmanship skills ;) ) and thusly I would say make a master print for character sheets and spell sheets so kids can get copies of they need them.
Dice sets are another element to consider; yes electronic dice don't get lost while playing and they don't damage tables, but when you physically roll a dice and add up your points to succeed it really feels like you did something beyond pushing a button to make it happen. Also you can't just say "stupid website" when you get a bad roll on an actual dice. Maybe you assign two sets to each table also so they learn the value of sharing things? Yes dice are some of the cheapest things you can buy for the hobby but still you don't want to have to buy $200 worth of dice in one hit to start this all off. Some players might even start to get their own if they like the hobby enough and they could still share with others or maybe as a gift they give some to their group and it shows care and makes all feel good.
The DMs need screens to hide information behind BUT you are at a school, a library to be exact, so instead of buying them I would use either the library books you already have available or grab some sturdy poster board for science projects and cut them down and let each DM design their own. You can get at least two, maybe three, blockers out of this so two science fair type poster boards should work for the whole DM 5 group. Side note: being on a library, you might want to consider one adventure purchase of Candlekeep Mysteries. ;)
Some people will argue you need minis, but you can make them from anything you have such as an eraser in the backpack or a coin or something. You can buy bulk pack minis on Amazon if you wanted to have a few around. Again this may be a case where if a kid just falls in love they go and get their own as well so consider how much you really need to play versus what just makes a table prettier.
You'll want battle maps to use so tables don't get drawn on or alternatively I saw someone use the back of wrapping paper because it had grid lines on the back and made for perfect 5ft squares. They're pretty cheap post Christmas sales!
I would also highly recommend making a list of Dos and Donts before gameplay even starts such as DO keep all games PG because if you don't post it up someone will take advantage of the lapse and it might turn some players off.
DO respect fellow players is another big one I would put on there. There's a form out there called the RPG Checklist which features safety tools. I wouldn't recommend again discussing these with players before things start so if someone is uncomfortable the game stops/switches points.
Why does it have to be so formal? D&D is a game, not a competition. Why not just give the players an overview of what the different classes are and let them make a character using the default stat array and play it? If they don't like the character, let them try a new one. I don't believe I've heard of anyone actually needing to play every class before they understand the rules.
People want to know the options and the differences. Some GMs do not let people change PC's just because.
This is a school club. If the GM's going to be that strict they shouldn't be GMing.
In a perfect world things work perfectly in real life especially with new players and GM's there are growing issues. Also age can be a big issue on many fronts where you have to have to do things differently based on the age group of the target participants, school type and maybe parent input. For example parents of 10 year old's often require more feedback then 17-18 year old's in such situations.
Note: there was a past post in which a person was asking the same basic question but was helping people work through trauma and or other issues in a group setting, if you do a search in the forums there might some some info in that post that will help you out.
Why does it have to be so formal? D&D is a game, not a competition. Why not just give the players an overview of what the different classes are and let them make a character using the default stat array and play it? If they don't like the character, let them try a new one. I don't believe I've heard of anyone actually needing to play every class before they understand the rules.
People want to know the options and the differences. Some GMs do not let people change PC's just because.
This is a school club. If the GM's going to be that strict they shouldn't be GMing.
In a perfect world things work perfectly in real life especially with new players and GM's there are growing issues. Also age can be a big issue on many fronts where you have to have to do things differently based on the age group of the target participants, school type and maybe parent input. For example parents of 10 year old's often require more feedback then 17-18 year old's in such situations.
I have no clue what point you're trying to make with your rambling about a perfect world. Nor do I understand what the relevance of saying that kids requiring different levels of feedback has to this topic. There's no circumstance where someone should be forced to play a character they don't like- if you think that's a good idea, you've missed the point of role-playing games. Kids can learn things quite quickly if they're given an opportunity to experiment for themselves. Let the kid make the character they want to play, and if it turns out that they don't actually enjoy that character then next session they can make a new character and try again. I don't see why this is an apparently controversial stance for an after-school club.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
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The Master tier let’s you share content with up to five campaigns with a maximum of twelve players each, so you will have more than enough slots for all your players.
What you have there will provide a good basic experience - it has a few subclasses, a smattering of races, and a solid selection of monsters to use. If you wanted to pick up another book—which you would not have to do—Monsters of the Multiverse gives a large selection of enemies and races, making it good bang for the buck.
Based on the experiences of a friend of mine who is likewise the faculty advisor for his D&D club, you also likely will lose some of those players to general attrition, with the largest losses occurring relatively soon after the first session. I know he started out with smaller adventures - one shots and things that took only two or three sessions - to get past the initial days of the club. This lets him not only see who is going to stay, without committing folks to a group that might fall apart, but test out the potential DMs and see if they like DMing before they sign on to a longer campaign.
Best of luck to you and your students!
Edit: Double post.
Maybe you could also buy Xanathar’s Guide to Everything and Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. Both contain some really cool rules expansions.
I really like D&D, especially Ravenloft, Exandria and the Upside Down from Stranger Things. My pronouns are she/they (genderfae).
Both are good, but not essential purchases right away. The core books are good enough to start with.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I would also suggest simple adventures to start and maybe even premade characters for the first game.
In the past at times I have divided up the learn to play adventures so each player has a chance to play most of the basic classes to get a feel of the game and rules. So first part all fighters, the second Wizards, and then cleric and rogues. Each small adventure is designed to show the differences between each class type and give some basic info about the game and rules as well as serves to minimize feelings of "I made a mistake at the beginning and now I do not want to continue" issues.
Good Luck
Forcing all the members to play each of the basic classes is going overboard. This isn't D&D Boot Camp.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Please see the section on clubs near the end of the first post of the Buyer's Guide (linked in my signature). That info pre-dates WOTC's purchase of DDB, so things could have changed, but it would be worthwhile to see if that is still a possibility.
Trying to Decide if DDB is for you? A few helpful threads: A Buyer's Guide to DDB; What I/We Bought and Why; How some DMs use DDB; A Newer Thread on Using DDB to Play
Helpful threads on other topics: Homebrew FAQ by IamSposta; Accessing Content by ConalTheGreat;
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Educator Resources | Dungeons & Dragons (wizards.com)
Are you doing homebrew adventures (ones you've written yourself) or ones that you buy from WotC?
If you're buying adventures on DDB, they automatically unlock the monsters you need, so I wouldn't necessarily bother with the Monster Manual. If you're writing your own adventures or using third party contrnt, then it's probably worth buying.
Once you've done some games with the core rules (PHB, DMG), I'd consider the following books:
Xanathar's Guide to Everything, which has DM based expansion stuff, more rules, and stuff to help improve the game.
Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, which has more subclasses,.and is generally geared to improving the player side of things.
Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse. 30 additional races for players, plus a an expansion to the Monster Manual.
However, you well find that doing the games for kids, the core rules may well be enough. Judge for yourself after doing it a few times.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
In general it goes back to how people learn things best and to provide experience with each basic group. Some people can just read things and visualize it and some need hands on experience. Also in each class group you are continually reinforcing the base rules of the system that tends to make things easier for players in the long rung.
Also remember the GM are probably new so they need the practice or pre-season "games" to lean or brush up on their craft also.
Why does it have to be so formal? D&D is a game, not a competition. Why not just give the players an overview of what the different classes are and let them make a character using the default stat array and play it? If they don't like the character, let them try a new one. I don't believe I've heard of anyone actually needing to play every class before they understand the rules.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
People want to know the options and the differences. Some GMs do not let people change PC's just because.
This is a school club. If the GM's going to be that strict they shouldn't be GMing.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I'm not sure anyone was ever advocating some kind of tag team match where people swap in and out at will. The point was that players should pick what appeals to them. If they don't like their character, they should be allowed to try a different one. Obviously, if there are obvious misunderstandings, like trying to use an Evocation Wizard as a Fighter, then I'd review the mechanics first and suggest a better playstyle, but if they're not going to enjoy it...then it'll become a choice of either creating a new character, or finding a new player, who also has a new character. I'd prefer the first.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
First of all Abssdnd I want to say how cool this is you're doing this! 👏
D&D is great for promoting creativity that kids have, social interactions in general, problem solving and teamwork, math, responsibility for showing up when you say you will, seeing there are others in the world besides yourself and your choices effect them also not just you, and showcasing consequences to actions they take.
As for what you need...
I'm assuming your a public school off the bat so if this isn't correct my apologies, but my first question is kind of who's paying for what? Is this from club money? Is this grant related in part? Or are you paying for it because you see the benefits? If it's this last option I want to try to get things as cheap as we can for you!
DNDBeyond has a lot of good free starter information so maybe test the club there before buying a subscription? These are school kids as you said and so as others said some are going to drop out due to finding other things more interesting or just losing interest in the game all together. Also you may have some who can't play regularly due to scheduling of other events in their lives (games if they're on teams as well) so one shots would be better for them. You could have a mix where you do 3 campaigns and 2 tables that are just one-shots. Have you heard of West Marches? One one-shot table could be that where they have a central home city and then adventure out from there doing one-shot quests so there's a town to maybe change with the things they do to feel like a campaign but isn't as much a time commitment as one.
There's also some other websites out there with free book information if you want to branch out. A lot is player focused so again DMs probably do need a resource for them. You definitely want to do a share bundle to maximize your dollar.
I know most will probably use electronics to play so you'll want plenty of power cord strips they can pull into; that said, I'm a big fan of paper (help work on those penmanship skills ;) ) and thusly I would say make a master print for character sheets and spell sheets so kids can get copies of they need them.
Dice sets are another element to consider; yes electronic dice don't get lost while playing and they don't damage tables, but when you physically roll a dice and add up your points to succeed it really feels like you did something beyond pushing a button to make it happen. Also you can't just say "stupid website" when you get a bad roll on an actual dice. Maybe you assign two sets to each table also so they learn the value of sharing things? Yes dice are some of the cheapest things you can buy for the hobby but still you don't want to have to buy $200 worth of dice in one hit to start this all off. Some players might even start to get their own if they like the hobby enough and they could still share with others or maybe as a gift they give some to their group and it shows care and makes all feel good.
The DMs need screens to hide information behind BUT you are at a school, a library to be exact, so instead of buying them I would use either the library books you already have available or grab some sturdy poster board for science projects and cut them down and let each DM design their own. You can get at least two, maybe three, blockers out of this so two science fair type poster boards should work for the whole DM 5 group. Side note: being on a library, you might want to consider one adventure purchase of Candlekeep Mysteries. ;)
Some people will argue you need minis, but you can make them from anything you have such as an eraser in the backpack or a coin or something. You can buy bulk pack minis on Amazon if you wanted to have a few around. Again this may be a case where if a kid just falls in love they go and get their own as well so consider how much you really need to play versus what just makes a table prettier.
You'll want battle maps to use so tables don't get drawn on or alternatively I saw someone use the back of wrapping paper because it had grid lines on the back and made for perfect 5ft squares. They're pretty cheap post Christmas sales!
I wish you luck in all of this! 😁🍀
I would also highly recommend making a list of Dos and Donts before gameplay even starts such as DO keep all games PG because if you don't post it up someone will take advantage of the lapse and it might turn some players off.
DO respect fellow players is another big one I would put on there. There's a form out there called the RPG Checklist which features safety tools. I wouldn't recommend again discussing these with players before things start so if someone is uncomfortable the game stops/switches points.
In a perfect world things work perfectly in real life especially with new players and GM's there are growing issues. Also age can be a big issue on many fronts where you have to have to do things differently based on the age group of the target participants, school type and maybe parent input. For example parents of 10 year old's often require more feedback then 17-18 year old's in such situations.
Note: there was a past post in which a person was asking the same basic question but was helping people work through trauma and or other issues in a group setting, if you do a search in the forums there might some some info in that post that will help you out.
I have no clue what point you're trying to make with your rambling about a perfect world. Nor do I understand what the relevance of saying that kids requiring different levels of feedback has to this topic. There's no circumstance where someone should be forced to play a character they don't like- if you think that's a good idea, you've missed the point of role-playing games. Kids can learn things quite quickly if they're given an opportunity to experiment for themselves. Let the kid make the character they want to play, and if it turns out that they don't actually enjoy that character then next session they can make a new character and try again. I don't see why this is an apparently controversial stance for an after-school club.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.